The Philippines has warned against using geckos to treat Aids and impotence, saying the folkloric practice in parts of Asia may put patients at risk. Environmental officials have also expressed alarm about the growing trade in the wall-climbing lizards in the Philippines

Ya Kwanza the 27-year-old silverback gorilla managed a few vanity close-ups of himself - before throwing the camera back at his keeper Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, based in Jersey in the Channel Islands, decided that their most photographed primate should turn the tables and become cameraman for the day

An adult female Sambas stream toad, or
Bornean rainbow toad as it is also called. Conservationists have taken the first photographs of one of the world's most elusive amphibians, after it was found for the first time since the 1920s

Herdsmen line up to spray a special herbicide to diminish the poisonous grassland flowers called
Stellera chamaejasma L on a pasture in the Gonghe county, in north-west China's Qinghai province. The plant are said to deprive nearby plants of water and grow rampantly, destroying the grassland unless measures are taken against it

A whale shark swims in the Caribbean Sea in Isla Mujeres. The Whale Shark Annual Festival has been taking place in Isla Mujeres since 2008 to promote eco-tourism and the conservation of this species considered vulnerable under the IUCN red list of threatened species

Pelicans fly to Mullet Island, one of the four Salton Buttes, small volcanoes on the southern San Andreas Fault, after sunset in California. Mullet Island, the only place for many thousands of island nesting birds to breed at the Salton Sea, will become vulnerable to attacks by predators such as raccoons and coyotes if the water level drops just a couple more feet

One of 17
spoon-billed sandpiper chicks that have hatched in a captive breeding scheme to bring the bird back from the brink of extinction. The team of experts led by staff at the WWT and Birds Russia is attempting to save the critically endangered sandpiper, one of the world's rarest birds, whose numbers had fallen to an estimated 120-200 pairs in the wild by 2009